Tip from the publisher: Don't get old

Attacks on medicare, moves to private pensions, underfunded nursing homes threaten aging baby boomers

By: Ish Theilheimer

  Years ago, the late Hank Snow had a hit of a song called "Ninety Miles an Hour Down Dead-End Street." This week's news on health care and how we take care of old folks in Canada makes my aging-boomer heart call out for defibrillation.
  Item: Quebec's nursing home nurses and home owners agree their facilities are in crisis. On Wednesday, the nurses issued a dire warning. Residents are routinely left in restraints. Perfectly continent residents are left in diapers because aides aren't available to take them to the toilet.
  Item: A new report from the Canadian Labour Congress confirms what anyone in Killaloe could have told you. Most retired Canadians rely on public pensions, not private savings or workplace pension plans.
 

Think about it, boomers. How long until you're strapped to a bed in a diaper?

  If you have to rely on CPP, don't count on moving to Victoria for your golden years! According to the CPP website, www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/isp/cpp/ rates_e.shtml, the average CPP benefit is just $412 a month ($4947 a year) and the maximum benefit is $763 per month ($9155 a year), if you've made top contributions. Add to that OAS (Old Age Security) benefits of about $400 a month, and Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) of a maximum of $500 a month for singles or $600 a month for couples. And that's all, old folks.
  The CLC study gives a better idea of what average oldsters actually live on. Average elderly household income from CPP in 1996 was $5,678. Average income from OAS/GIS was $7,887. In other words, average elderly families are living on $13,000 in public pensions, plus whatever their workplace pension and individual savings may contribute.
  And a whole lot of us don't have and never have had a workplace pension. So it's good for us to think about what $13,000 a year will buy at a time in our lives when we will need more help than ever to get along.
 

"Those who would exchange Canadians' public pension system for a private one should take note - they are fooling around with a majority of people's retirement."

  Despite all the RRSP hype, only a small portion or Canadians will ever be able to afford to retire on savings alone. Most older Canadians do and will rely on public pensions.
  "Those who would exchange Canadians' public pension system for a private one should take note - they are fooling around with a majority of people's retirement," says the CLC report's co-author Bob Baldwin. This is an idea gaining respect among the talking head crowd. Many point to the success of Augusto Pinochet in introducing such a system in Chile - seriously. (I heard a glowing report on CBC Radio just last week on this subject.)
  Many of us baby boomers almost no savings at all. We'd like to have brawny guys rowing for us like in the RRSP ads on TV. But our paycheques get spent on housing, transportation, taxes, insurance, and other essentials of living. What's left would hardly keep a toy sailboat afloat.
  Add to all that the abandonment of medicare that Diane Marleau warns of in her exclusive Straight Goods interview and it starts looking pretty scary. As Marleau says, "the powerful and the influential" are taking away medicare, one piece at a time. And Canadian consumers - especially aging boomers - will pay through the nose.
  Look at the prices Americans are paying for drugs. And don't even ask what they're paying for health insurance and how little coverage they get for their high private health care premiums? And definitely steer clear of what they don't get for those premiums - what drugs, therapy or surgery are refused because the private insurers simply won't pay.
  Think about it, boomers. Will there be a co-payment when you go to the doctor's about that ache you're getting in your knees these days? Will your cataract surgery be covered? How long until you're strapped to a bed in a diaper?
  Look ahead, boomer. That's what Diane Marleau fought and why they greased the skids under her. That's the dead end at the end of the street we're speeding down.
  Don't get old.

- Ish Theilheimer
- March 13, 2000

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